Heretical thoughts on intelligence and political correctness -- written by Chris Brand, posted by John Ray

Sunday, October 25, 2009

SWITZERLAND TO VOTE ON MOSQUES

As Europe’s most directly-democratic country went to vote on whether to allow more minarets, a ‘controversial’ poster appeared (BrusselsJournal, 17 x):

Translation: Stop it! Yes to the minaret ban

PAEDOHYSTERIA TRUMPS SECURITY

Having failed to hang mad Mueslis as traitors, Britain found that its plan to take ‘nude’ X-rays of all airport passengers (to vet them for bombs) had to be circumscribed by its equivalent failure to deal with paedohysteria. For airport staff viewing clothes-penetrating X-rays of under-18-yr-olds would, of course, be guilty of the tabloid-horrendous crime of paedophilic downloading. (Whether children could be touch-searched thus surfaced as a question. – Though doubtless paedophiles would have worked out the answer years before the hysteria-driven British ‘authorities.’)

BLACK PROFESSOR BACKS FREE SPEECH

A new ‘champion of White supremacism’ was alleged (by the Southern Poverty Law Centre) to have emerged as Vanderbilt University’s Professor Carol Swain, a Black scholar known for her conservative views, backed the showing of a film saying White-on-Black racism was largely a myth – annoyingly to peecee multicults, she felt such topics should be discussed, not suppressed (AmRen, 17 x).

‘NO DECENT GOVERNANCE IN AFRICA’ – BLACKS

There was hilarity all round as the mainly-Black judges of the ‘Mo Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership,’ presided over by Holy U.N. Somebody Kofi BAnnana, could not be awarded since no African country was thought to have a sufficiently high level of attainment (BBC Radio 4, 19 x).

‘GENES à ENVIRONMENT à IQ’ CONFIRMED

Chris Brand, The g Factor, 1996, p. 112 (also 2000):

”[Work in Minnesota and Finland suggests DZ] twins’ different genes gradually establish more influence over their micro-environments. All these observations are compatible with the idea that genetic factors (epistasis and active G,ECOV as much as additive) are overwhelmingly important in determining late-middle-age levels of intelligence. Apparently, the longer the time span across which genes operate, especially via a person’s micro-environment, the greater is their effect on g. By contrast, the imposed environmental differences that are involved in different types of homes and styles of parenting seem to affect the children only in early childhood, and not beyond.”

Robert Plomin, Technology Review, 2009:

”…. the genetic influence on IQ becomes more pronounced during development. In a study of 11,000 pairs of twins from four countries, we have recently shown that the heritability of IQ increases linearly from childhood (about 40 percent) to adolescence (about 55 percent) to young adulthood (about 65 percent). Why? No one knows, but my guess is that the answer involves what is called genotype-environment correlation: as children grow up, they increasingly select, modify, and even create their own experiences, partly on the basis of their genetic propensities. A child genetically inclined toward high verbal skills might choose to read more, enhancing those skills.”

HOMOREALISM RE-ASSERTED

Brave Kevin Myers of the Irish Independent (20 x) became the only columnist in the British Isles willing to defend ‘homophobic’ Jan Moir, the Daily Mail columniste who had sparked outrage (e.g. 22,000 homosexualist-orchestrated emails to the Press Council) with her straightforward observation that the death of healthy 33-year-old ‘Boyzone’ popsinger Stephen Gately from ‘fluid on the lungs’ alongside a total stranger from Bulgaria (with whom he’d taken cannabis before they hit the sack in the same flat as his ‘civil partner’) might have had something to do with his yag lifestyle.

BNP x BBC

As the British National Party approached its date with destiny – the BBC having decided to allow BNP leader Nick Griffin MEP on ‘Question Time’ in deference to the party having pulled in a million votes in the 2009 Euroelections – hysteria mounted among lefties seeking as ever to shut down free speech (like ground-glass-spreading anti-apartheid activist, former Labour Minister Peter Hain [founder of Anti-Nazi League; once called the “wife” of gay activist Peter Tatchell; resigned from the Bliar Cabinet for failing to declare donors to his deputy-Labour-leadership campaign]). However, the BNP’s website had fun at the expense of NG’s co-panelists ‘slimy’ Jack Straw [Lab], ‘useless’ Baroness Warsi [Con] and Chris Huhne [Lib], and ‘Black history fabricator’ Bonnie Greer [Black Monster Raving Loony Party] (Independent, 20 x); and a new leaking of the party’s membership list by its enemies revealed it had had no difficulty attracting subscriptions from doctors, professors and very senior army personnel.

Challenged by Army generals over linking the BNP to past images of British military and to Sir Winston Churchill, Nick Griffin came back quickly, saying many soldiers backed the BNP, comparing the generals to “Nazi war criminals” who should be hanged (for their efforts in the “illegal” Iraq war) and observing that, given Churchill’s views on keeping Britain and the Commonwealth separate from any United States of Europe, on the dangers of fundamentalist Islam and on 1950s immigrants ‘only coming for our benefits system’, the only party Churchill could have joined in 2009 would have been the BNP. The BNP’s David Morris (e.g. 24 x) came up with Cabinet and biographical records showing Churchill had actually recommended the slogan “Keep England White” for the Conservative Party in 1955. {To which NG might have added that Churchill – though certainly a man of the Empire rather than a strict nationalist, let alone fascist – was both a race realist and a keen eugenicist.}

Backtracking from its modest bravery in inviting Griffin on to ‘Question Time’ despite a threatened legal challenge from glass-strewer Hain, the BBC let out that it would pre-record the QT programme, giving its editors hours in which to edit out episodes of left-wing beastliness and any good jokes by NG (Guardian, 20 x).

With respect to the appearance of Ms Greer, a Black Chicago woman who had taken British citizenship, Mr Griffin said: “I think she is quite witty, I have seen her on ‘Question Time’ a number of times. She is a bit whacky when she says that Europeans throughout the Middle Ages worshipped Black women so she has got quirky aspect;s but the British like an eccentric so I’m sure we’ll get on all right.”

Most newspapers, after two decades of grovelling to PeeCee (almost never mentioning the racial origins of the many ‘ethnic minority’ murderers, rapists and robbers whose crimes they minimally reported), concluded it was marginally proper to debate with the BNP – and that Britain’s naughty political parties were remiss for not having done so. {Thus did Britain’s pathetic press prepare itself for the inevitable around-turn – though in fact it was the press which had bullied the Conservatives out of ‘racism’ c. 2000.}

Scottish Secretary Jim Murphy [Lab.] admitted that the BNP had pulled in 29,000 votes in 2009, a tenfold increase on 1999 despite Scotland having its own ‘National’ Party (with as much absurd commitment to socialism as Labour and the BNP).

Prior to the debate, the BNP found that the BBC could not (or would not) accept NG being winched in by helicopter to its west London studios – to bypass the howling mobs of ‘Unite Against Fascism’ (formerly ‘Anti-Nazi League’ – my own main opponent in 1996/7) and its ultraviolent wing, ‘Antifa’ (for its imprisoned ‘martyrs’ see http://www.antifa.org.uk/pris.htm). NG feared he would be assassinated on his way in to QT (InTheNews, 22 x) – though he jokingly thanked “Auntie” BBC for giving the BNP its first-ever opportunity to score before a mass audience.

Partly thanks to police incompetence, some 25 UAF demonstrators from a poorly-handled crowd of 500 managed to break into the reception area at Television House; and only six arrests were made despite three police being injured.

Finally, NG managed to enter the BBC building by a side entrance and the show went ahead – due for broadcasting three hours later. So the big question was whether he would get the BNP a poll boost, and if so from where.

{The BNP was committed to continuance of the welfare state; it backed ‘British jobs for British workers’ (a slogan that had also been used by Prime Minister Brown, but was known to all non-tabloid readers be unrealizable without a British withdrawal from the European Union that would be massively opposed by both businessmen, politicians and those grateful for the lack of West-European wars in recent times); it had no clear policy on how to ‘voluntarily repatriate’ immigrants (many of them, especially those of Caribbean and Pakistani stock, already having British citizenship, along with their children); and, though firmly anti-Islam in recent years, it nevertheless wanted to pull out of the war in Afghanistan. This collection of policies/pipedreams looked best set to appeal to old, White, ‘working class’ Labour voters; but the lowbrow tabloids the Mirror and the Sun were already committed to the Labour and Conservative parties respectively; so everything depended on the smaller and righter-wing Mail and Express – both of whose cowardly journalists had scrupulously followed peecee injunctions (e.g. about not mentioning the racial origins of criminals) for 15 years. Sensationally, on the programme, according to an early insider report, NG compared British Whites to “aborigines”: he meant thereby to claim the same sympathy for native Brits as the Guardian would normally claim for aborigines in Australia, PNG, Bongo Bongo etc; but whether his analogy would appeal to the average middle-aged soccer-fan remained to be seen.}

The debate itself turned out to be something of a fiasco in that the BBC chose to broadcast bits of the debate in advance (in its news items) and turned out to have assembled not only four hostile-to-NG panellists and a hostile Dimblebore chairperson but also a 99% hostile audience. NG kept his cool and smiled a lot and affected to applaud Bonnie Greer; but it is hard to appear ‘normal’ when being booed and shouted down at every opportunity. However, though NG got off to a shaky start by not dealing straightforwardly with accusations of his racist, Hitlerite, KKK and Holocaust-denying past (he should at least have set out the youthful Communism of many Labourites), he recovered well and provided several impressive mini-expositions of the BNP’s regarding PeeCee Multiculturalism as a traitorous “genocide” of Britain’s indigenous peoples (he preferred not to say Whites).

He did not lose, even in such a hostile environment; so the result was surely a points WIN for race realism – even though the Mail and Express did not come round (indeed, portraying NG as a ‘nutter,’ ‘devil’ and ‘sewer rat’). The result was considered a DRAW by the Times’ top political correspondent, Sam Coates (23 x). The Wall Street Journal’s Ian Martin put it well (22 x): “[BNP sympathizers] saw Griffin being beaten up by a West London audience and a panel all agreeing on how awful he is. But that won’t have dealt with their feelings of alienation. Many will still feel the mainstream parties don’t understand them.”

For the Daily Telegraph, columnist George Pitcher likewise thought the BNP probably benefited from the rigged ‘humiliation of the fat boy’ (23 x). Even Jewish Europhile Labourite MP Denis McShane reckoned the score as “BNP 3 – BBC 0”; and it was good to see ‘Justice Secretary’ Jack Straw ashen faced as NG pointed out that whereas NG’s own father had been in the RAF and fought Nazism in WWII, JS’s own father, though equally in the RAF, had had to be imprisoned for refusing to fight {presumably during the period of the Nazi-Soviet Pact}.

The show had been watched by an incredible eight million people (50% of Britain’s TV-viewing audience around 11pm, having a dozen main channels to chose from), up with ‘East Enders’ and ‘Coronation Street’ and ahead of ‘Strictly Come Dancing’– the normal viewing figure for QT being around three million (BroadcastNow, 23 x). Equally notably, the left had failed to produce the ‘thousands’ of demonstrators in Shepherds Bush that had been widely predicted: only mere hundreds turned up, most papers agreed, despite the protest being graced by such luminary lefties as ‘Red’ Ken Livingstone, the former Mayor of London. (In line with the treachery of Britain’s ‘right’-wing newspapers, the fullest account of the debate was provided in the Guardian, 23 x, whose Aditya Chakrabortty noted the BBC’s failure to supply any robust working-class opposition to NG, 23 x. For the Specfator’s ‘Coffee House,’ NG’s fundamentally British lack of fascist charisma was cannily noted by Lloyd Evans, 23 x. But neither the paparazzi intellectuals of the left or right could explain how NG was fundamentally hamstrung: by his unwillingness to mention IQ -- which was probably lacking as much in the BNP’s own membership as among blade-flashing, drug-dealing welfare-dependent Blacks and frothing, suicide-bombing, wife-beating Muesli psychotics.)

By the evening of 23 x, Sky News was quoting a post-debate YouGov poll as finding (from a sample of 1,600 voters) 12% ‘completely’ supported the BNP and that altogether 22% would ‘seriously consider’ voting for the party (far ahead of the 5% that actually voted for it at the Euroelections, and likely to increase fast as neighbours and workmates announced their thinking and created a new atmosphere far from that of Westminster hysteria). The attempt to ‘lynch’ NG had plainly failed. Fat Black Labour leftie Diane Abbott (herself a regular genial TV performer, under the chairmanship of Andrew Neil) put it well (Independent, 24 x): “It does not matter that Griffin gave a poor performance. No matter that London-based middle-class journalists competed to denounce him in the newspapers the morning after. What people will remember was that last Thursday was indeed "BNP day" and the party and its views were somehow accepted into the mainstream.”

The nearest any British journalist got to giving NG a helping hand was (ex-Conservative Central Office) Amanda Platell (Daily Mail, 24 x): “Ken Livingstone is outraged that a bigot like Nick Griffin was allowed to share a platform with mainstream politicians on Question Time. Yes, that'll be the same Ken Livingstone who shared a public platform with Gerry Adams when the IRA was actively carrying out terrorist atrocities. Hypocrisy? It's Ken's middle name.”

VISUAL AID FOR BNP

As Nick Griffin went into battle, British life supplied a tangible illustration of what anti-multiculturalists fought against: a Jobcentre advertisement for work at Supreme Nutrition Ltd in Acton, Suffolk, insisting that applicants speak Polish (Daily Telegraph, 23 x).

At the same time, in America, a Black woman, Megan Williams, admitted she had not been raped and made to drink urine and eat rats’ faeces by her boyfriend and six White friends – even though all the Whites had been jailed after ‘confessing’ rather than face the even-longer sentences they would have received under American ‘justice’ if they had not kowtowed to American pro-Black hysteria.

MUESLI-ON-MUESLI STRIFE BUBBLES ALONG

As a Taliban suicide byciclist killed seven outside a top Pak air base and research centre (alleged to house Pak’s nuclear deterrent), fatalities on both side in three weeks of enraged effort reached 200 vs 200 (Guardian, 24 x). The Taliban also threatened to kill anyone participating in new elections called in Afghanistan.

MULTICULTURALISM MAY BE IN BREACH OF HUMAN RIGHTS

Following their leader Nick Griffin’s successful defence of his position on Question Time, the BNP released extracts from the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) suggesting that Labour’s secret decision of 2001 (lately mentioned by Blairite spin doctor Andrew Neather) to encourage immigration so as to ‘help’ make Britain multicultural had in fact been a flagrant contravention of this UN-sanctioned charter (24 x).

Sunday, October 18, 2009

MUESLI ON MUESLI STUFF KICKS OFF IN PAK

As Pakistan reeled from 120 killings by terrorists in four days, it transpired that the bombers etc. had come not just from the Af/Pak border (where the Pak Army planned an assault on What’syourdrinkistan) but also from the centrally situated Punjab – where the loony Pak Army had for decades encouraged “good jihadists” who would commit to fighting Hindus. Evidently the Mad Mueslis of Pakiland had finally created their own Frankenstein: of Even Madder Mueslis who wanted to enjoy America’s multi-billion-dollar support programmes for themselves.

While governments across the Stans quaked at the thought of what BinLiner and the Tallyhoes could do to them, help seemed at hand as China began its judicial disposal of 700 arrested Urumqi Muslim Uighurs by sentencing six of them to death – yielding Uighur “rage” that was promptly retailed by AlJazeera (13 x). At last the West too, which had proved itself politically incapable of fighting the Mueslis since New York’s 9/11, seemed likely to get some significant help – if at the price of letting China advance to the oilwells of the Caspian. In token of its expansionism, China increased its trade with Africa fourfold over 2004-8 and in particular struck a £4B deal for oil and minerals with dictatorial and druggy Guinea (Times, 13 x).

As the Americans waved $7.5B at Pakiland to buy some action against Muesli terror, Pakistan quickly revealed itself as hopelessly divided as between Army, Government and Opposition – with further serious rifts within each of these three (The Hindu BusinessLine, 15 x; BBC, 16 x). Other countries had promised $5B for Pak if agreement with the US on the $7.5B package could be achieved. Already, bankrupt and electricity-lite Pakiland was being propped up by a $11B loan from the I.M.F.

Suicide car bombs and hours-long gun battles at police stations on a single morning in Lahore (east, capital of Punjab) and Kohat (north-west) added at least 40 dead to the 120 dead of the previous week (RadioNetherlandsWorldwide, 15 x). Explosions were also reported in Peshawar – killing at least eleven police personnel (CBC News [Canada], 16 x). "The enemy has started a guerrilla war," Pakistan’s interior minister, Rehman Malik, told a television station – but he was snubbed by the military when he tried to lay a wreath in Rawalpindi (ThaindianNews, 16 x).

After 60 years of independence, murderous Pakistan (IQ 84, full of religious psychosis and with no agreed elite, having killed lovely Benazir Bhutto in 2007) seemed about to demonstrate it was no more suited to self-government than any Black African country; though just what plan the USA had for its much-funded and nuclear-armed ‘ally’ remained to be seen. Attacks by American drones had killed hundreds of Muesli militants (and some civilians) in Wazyurdrinkistan in the course of the previous year. But the Army (Pak’s major political force) wished only to fight the ‘bad jihadists’ of South Waziristan, not the ‘good jihadists’ of North Waziristan (who were fighting the Americans in Afghaniland) or the Punjab (who were suicide-bombing the Indians [e.g. in Bombay] whenever they could).

The involvement of ‘good’ Punjabi jihadists in the attacks on police and military was indicated by the involvement of three female suicide bombers – for the beardies of Waziristan did not allow their own women out on the streets, not even to do suicide bombing.

GENE FOR COGNISOMETHING

A gene for “quick and accurate decision making” was reported by Berlin researchers (Max Planck Institute) (Daily Telegraph, 13 x) – though whether it was related to IQ could not be mentioned.

BLACK RACE REALISM

With proper eugenic sense, the ladies of Tanzania began lightening up, using skin-whitening creams, in order to get access to Chinese colonialists who would, they believed, be better prospects as lovers and husbands than “lazy” Black men (Times, 13 x).

RACE REALISTS TO ENDURE BARRAGE

As Richard Lynn and Phil Rushton waited to see the results of the editing process that would allow them on TV Channel 4 (on 26 x) to issue the occasional sentence about race and IQ (mainly no doubt with people who had never read their work), Oona King, Channel 4’s ‘head of diversity’ (former Labour MP; Afro-American father; Jewish mother) confidently announced the programme would show conclusively that “you cannot link race to IQ” (AmRen, 15 x)….

PEECEE BIFFED

In a small victory for freedom of speech, top Dutch politician Geert Wilders (who, as a homosexual, was not interested in being thrown off a cliff under the terms of Sharia law), was allowed into Britain and indeed into the House of Lords. For whatever reason, he chose not to show his anti-Islam film ‘Fitna’; but his visit did allow BBC TV footage of assembled Mueslis in London shouting “FREEDOM -- GO TO HELL!” thus adding to the “JEWS TO THE GAS!” material previously seen when Israel did some smiting in Gaza.

MONEY NO ANSWER IN EDUCATION

New figures of primary school children in both England and Scotland showed no improvement for years of shedloads of cash being unloaded into school systems by Labour and the S.N.P. (Daily Telegraph, 16 x); in New York, ditto, vast amounts of cash and idealistic effort had produced no narrowing of the (3-yr) gap between White and Black kids in arithmetic (New York Times, 16 x).

Sunday, October 11, 2009

PAEDOHYSTERIC TURNED PAEDOPHILE

As obese (18-stone) mother of two daughters, Vanessa George, 39, was jailed for four years for taking obscene pictures of tots at her ‘Little Ted’ nursery in Plymouth (pictures sent to her would-be boyfriend, businessman and once-jailed pervert Colin Blanchard, 38), it was learned (from her irate husband) that George herself was an enthusiastic paedohysteric who would jump up and down when TV showed paedophiles, demanding castration for such monsters (News of the World, 4 x). Experts said 20% of Britain’s paedophiles were women (Observer, 4 x) – though what percentage were self-proclaimed paedohysterics was unknown.

THUG COP WAS BLACK

As complaints were set out about Metropolitan Police violence to anti-G20 demonstrators outside the Bank of England, it turned out the (allegedly) most thuggish police sergeant, remarkably named Delroy Smellie (but called Tony by friends in the Met’s ‘elite’ ‘Territorial Support Group’), was Black – or at least half-Black (Daily Telegraph, 28 ix).

TOP LYING LABOUR LAWYERETTE WAS BLACK

As Her Venerated Multiculti Worshipfulness, ‘Attorney General’ Baroness Scotland was daily disrobed (e.g. in Daily Mail) as a lying b*stard who had employed on a sub-legal wage an illegal Tongan immigrant without inspecting -- or at least copying [fined £5K] -- her passport and without having her pay tax, it turned out that ‘Scotland’, though looking somewhat Asian, identified herself as Black, having been born in Dominica to parents of Antiguan and Dominican extraction (Wikipedia, 5 x).

RACE REALISM RULES ROMANCE

When Asian females sent messages at a dating site to Black males, they received replies from 55% of the men; but when Black males wrote to Asian females, they were answered only 17% of the time. This fact and others (e.g. indicating the overwhelming popularity of White men with women of all races) emerged as a romantic-match website released its statistics (AmRen, 5 x).

RACISM TO REIGN IN PARADISE

A Saudi cleric named Sheikh Muhammad al-Munajid promised on Saudi TV that “the virgins we Muslims will get in paradise will be White. If you blow yourself up in a martyrdom operation, you’ll be rewarded with 72 pure women, and not one of them will be Black or Indian, or even Arab or Iranian.” (National Post [Canada], 5 x.)

WHITER IS NICER

Levels of ‘human development’ as measured by the United Nations (using longevity, literacy and income) were overwhelmingly higher in White than in Black countries (ComcastNews, 5 x – giving the full table, based on 2007 figures). Amusingly, White superiority could not be attributed to colonialist rapacity, for the top five countries were Norway, Australia, Iceland, Canada and Éire. Japan made it into the top ten; but the United Kingdom (its schools wrecked by forty years of socialism/egalitarianism) could not even make it into the top twenty (though admittedly having Germany, Hong Kong and Singapore for company). All the bottom twenty countries, said by the U.N. to have “low human development” were African, with the exception of wartorn Afghanistan (where America and Britain had been vainly trying to provide democracy, wymmin’s lib, ‘reconstruction’ and eradication of the poppy crop since 2001, resulting in most intelligent young Afghani males becoming asylum seekers waiting at Calais for a chance to jump in the back of a lorry and thus get to Nirvana U.K.).

‘ENLIGHTENED’ FRANCE TO FACE PAEDOHYSTERIA

France, whose top philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre had had his ‘Antoine Roquentin,’ the 30-yr-old hero of his La Nausée, go to the defence of a harmless paedophile (bullied by a librarian), and whose film-makers had joined those of America and Poland in defending Roman Polanski against much-belated persecution for S.I. with a 13-year-old nude, druggy and sexually experienced ‘model’ girl, found its liberalism under attack from both right and left as its yag ‘culture minister’, Frédéric Mitterrand [see previous], who had also defended Polanski, was noticed to have once used with self-confessed excitement “boy” prostitutes in Thailand – though Mitterand insisted the “boys” were over whatever might have been the age of consent in the world’s capital of sex tourism (Guardian, 8 x).

The openly gay politician rejected calls from opposition parties for his resignation, saying his partners at Thai brothels were consenting adults. He said: "I absolutely condemn sexual tourism, which is shameful, and I condemn paedophilia, which I have never practised in any way whatsoever." In an emotional interview on France's most-watched news bulletin, Mr Mitterand accused his critics of jumping to false conclusions after reading his 2005 memoir The Bad Life, in which he wrote of liaisons with prostitutes whom he described as "young boys".

“I don’t see why he can’t stay in the government, and I don’t see why we dredge up such a pathetic polemic after such a long time,” Henri Guaino, adviser to President Sarkozy, said of Mitterrand on France 2 television. “Is he on trial, has he committed a crime?” Sarkozy himself, who had previously commended Mitterrand’s memoirs as courageous, backed his embattled minister; and Guiano added that the criticism of Mitterrand was “pathetic.”

Next, Mitterrand was in hot water for offering a character defence to a court (leaked to the internet) of two youths (one his godson) who had raped a 16-year-old girl…. (AFP, 10 x). Mitterrand accused the press of a “manhunt.”

TALIBAN GIVES PRES. BARRY HIS ‘PEACE PRIZE’ REWARD

How would Nobel Peace Prize Winner Barry Hussein Obarmy react to America's great ally, Pakiland, suffering >50 dead and >400 injured to the Taliban in a crowded Peshawar bazaar in a single morning, having evidently failed to give much effective help in the War on Terror (aka Tenth Crusade)? Peshawar, 100 miles from the purpose-built modern Paki capital Islamabad in north-western Pakistan, straddled the major American supply line for non-military supplies for its troops in Afghanistan. The Pakistani Army (chiefly bursting to fight against Hindu India, which backed the Afghan government and had seen two bombings of its Kabul embassy) had previously conducted three campaigns in the Tallywho/BinLiner-infested province of Wazyourdrinkistan, displacing millions of peasants and killing the occasional bullet-girded beardie (with the help of American drones), but to little serious effect. It was thought the Taliban had 10K fighters in north-west Pakiland, including a thousand Uzbeks; the Pakis had c. 30K troops in the area. Would the great Nobelist of Washington countenance a bit of military action on the ground at last -- as distinct from the inaction that had characterized the West's 'campaign' in Afghaniland for the previous eight years? U.S. forces said they had abandoned remote outposts in the east of Afghanistan, near the Pakistani border, six days after Taliban fighters stormed the positions, killing eight Americans, the USA’s worst losses in more than a year. Eleven Pakis had died from another Peshawar bomb blast two weeks previously.

{Obarmy tended to forget that America had a million Black jailbirds who, with his inspiration, could surely do some useful fighting to get at supposedly disease-free Muesli women; and Europe could supply a further 30K enthusiastic Blecks.}

The next day, Obarmy’s great ally got another shock as audacious grenade-tossing Taliban fighters (from the O’Doody McFooqi group, in Pak uniforms, intent on revenging the slaying-by-drone of their leader Maresoup) stormed the General HQ (and thus top brass) of the Pak Army in Rawalpindi (Pakistan’s fourth-largest city, near Islamabad), resulting in an hour-long gun battle which killed four attackers as well as some ten Pak soldiers while leaving five attackers (who had taken fifteen hostages) roaming the HQ for the next twelve hours in pursuit of other high-quality targets (ThaindianNews, 10 x; HindustanTimes, 10 x). The military personnel killed included a brigadier and a lieutenant colonel, according to a Pak official who spoke on condition of anonymity. Panic hit Rawalpindi at this demonstration of the uselessness of the Pak Army: shops and banks closed and thousands fainted in traffic jams as Pak authorities failed to get a grip on the streets. The fact that the Taliban had infliltrated the Pak Army confirmed worldwide that Pakistan was in a de facto state of civil war.

Meantime Peacepipe O’Barmy decided to send another 20K US troops to Afghaninam to win more Nobel prizes for him and that he would need to bribe the Pak Army with further billions of dollars to get any semblance of pseudo-anti-terrorist action out of them.

The price of Obarmy’s Peace Prize became clear as the Weekly Standard revealed Obarmy’s foray at the United Nations, abandoning any right to free speech (previously defended by America) and agreeing with Muslim demands that countries must protect their citizens and visitors from any criticism of their race or religion (5 x). Even the usually-peecee European Union thought that was going a bit far, wanting only criticism of particular individuals to be banned. (The E.U. reserved strictures against general criticism to Holocaust denial.)

CAMBRIDGE COWERS TO H.M.G.

Not risking the wrath of Britain’s neo-Stalinist Labour government, the cowardly Cambridge Union withdrew its invitation to U.S. talk show host Michael Savage (see previous) arguing (by video link, as part of a debate at the Union) that it had been unfair of H.M.G. to ban him from Britain (along with a list of mad Mueslis) as a ‘racist troublemaker’ (WorldNetDaily, 8 x).

ÉIRE SOCKS IT TO BLACKS

Risking the wrath of Holy Black South Africa, the Holy Republic of Ireland granted asylum to a White South African woman, Diane Jefferson, 22, who had come to Éire for education and marriage and, facing deportation, pleaded successfully that young White females faced unacceptable risks of being raped or murdered in South Africa (cf. the case of Brandon Huntley, granted asylum in Canada – see previous) (Daily Telegraph, 9 x).

LIBERALS EMBRACE SCHOOL SEGREGATION

After years of multiculti lefties deploring segregation and streaming, the liberal-dominated schoolboard of Berkeley, California, proposed segregation into massively funded special schools for low-achieving pupils – who would be overwhelmingly Black and Mexican (ContraCostaTimes, 9 x). {Typical White parents would be likely to breathe a sigh of relief at such removal of dullards and troublemakers from normal classes.}

MUSLIMS CALL FOR BURKA BAN

The Muslim Canadian Congress called for the burka and niqab to be banned, saying they marginalized women. They thus joined a top Egyptian mufti who had explained that burka-wearing was not called for in the Koran and should thus be banned. Turkey already banned the burka; and France banned any religiously significant headgear in state schools and had a parliamentary commission considering whether to go further (National Post [Canada], 8 x).

Sunday, October 04, 2009

WORKHOUSES RESTORED

Faced with the across-the-board failures of NuLabour to solve Britain’s socialism-created problem of family breakdown and resulting criminality, PM ‘Gay Gordon’ Brown announced to his conference of the party faithful (and a few distinctly slow-hand-clapping Labour MPs) that pregnant teenagers of 17 and under would no longer be given taxpayer-funded council house tenancies but would instead have to reside, as a condition of £130-per-week support for themselves and their illegitimate sprogs, in ‘training centres’ where they would be taught ‘parenting skills’ and perhaps occasionally have to practise cleaning the lav.

{Just which lucky group of social-science-trained Labour apparatchiks would be paid from taxation to run the draconian new workhouses was not explained.}

ENVIRONMENTOBABBLERS vs CHILDHOOD FUN

Children came under threat as ‘researchers’ found that adults with records of violence had eaten more sweets as children (Science Now, 1 x). Controlling for class, parental attitudes, education and IQ still left a significant association; but the researchers did not seem to consider the elementary possibility that genetically naughty children more often disobey parental injunctions against high sweet consumption and then go on to become naughty adults.

JAPAN TO RESUME BREEDING

As a new Democratic Party Government took over in Tokyo, it promised to change tax laws to make family life easier and thus resist siren calls for slave labour imported from abroad – though whether the new programme would stress high-IQ breeding remained unclear. (AmRen, 1 x).

INCOMPETENT KILLER DOC WAS BLACK

Though this was unmentionable by journalists, the ‘German’ doctor who had been flown in by an NHS subcontractor to provide out-of-hours service and killed a 70-year-old British engineer by prescribing a lethal dose of diamorphine turned out not only to have poor English, to be largely untrained as a GP and to have been tired out on the night in question but also to be Black (Daily Telegraph, 2 x).

{Around the same time, in America, a dying patient had his valuable Rolex watch stolen by his surgeon, a Black man – no doubt an ‘affirmative action’ product, prompting the observation ‘you can take a Bleck out of de ‘hood, but you can’t take de ‘hood out of de Bleck’ (AmRen, 28 ix).}

Background

"And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed" -- Genesis 12:3

My (Gentile) opinion of antisemitism: The Jews are the best we've got so killing them is killing us.

I have always liked the story of Gideon (See Judges chapters 6 to 8) and it is surely no surprise that in the present age Israel is the Gideon of nations: Few in numbers but big in power and impact.

"The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left." -- Ecclesiastes 10:2 (NIV)

Postings from Brisbane, Australia by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.) -- former member of the Australia-Soviet Friendship Society, former anarcho-capitalist and former member of the British Conservative party.

Leftists think that utopia can be coerced into existence -- so no dishonesty or brutality is beyond them in pursuit of that "noble" goal

America is no longer the land of the free. It is now the land of the regulated -- though it is not alone in that, of course

Envy is a strong and widespread human emotion so there has alway been widespread support for policies of economic "levelling". Both the USA and the modern-day State of Israel were founded by communists but reality taught both societies that respect for the individual gave much better outcomes than levelling ideas. Sadly, there are many people in both societies in whom hatred for others is so strong that they are incapable of respect for the individual. The destructiveness of what they support causes them to call themselves many names in different times and places but they are the backbone of the political Left

The large number of rich Leftists suggests that, for them, envy is secondary. They are directly driven by hatred and scorn for many of the other people that they see about them. Hatred of others can be rooted in many things, not only in envy. But the haters come together as the Left.

Leftists hate the world around them and want to change it: the people in it most particularly. Conservatives just want to be left alone to make their own decisions and follow their own values.

The failure of the Soviet experiment has definitely made the American Left more vicious and hate-filled than they were. The plain failure of what passed for ideas among them has enraged rather than humbled them.

Ronald Reagan famously observed that the status quo is Latin for “the mess we’re in.” So much for the vacant Leftist claim that conservatives are simply defenders of the status quo. They think that conservatives are as lacking in principles as they are.

The shallow thinkers of the Left sometimes claim that conservatives want to impose their own will on others in the matter of abortion. To make that claim is however to confuse religion with politics. Conservatives are in fact divided about their response to abortion. The REAL opposition to abortion is religious rather than political. And the church which has historically tended to support the LEFT -- the Roman Catholic church -- is the most fervent in the anti-abortion cause. Conservatives are indeed the one side of politics to have moral qualms on the issue but they tend to seek a middle road in dealing with it. Taking the issue to the point of legal prohibitions is a religious doctrine rather than a conservative one -- and the religion concerned may or may not be characteristically conservative. More on that here

The Leftist hunger for change to the society that they hate leads to a hunger for control over other people. And they will do and say anything to get that control: "Power at any price". Leftist politicians are mostly self-aggrandizing crooks who gain power by deceiving the uninformed with snake-oil promises -- power which they invariably use to destroy. Destruction is all that they are good at. Destruction is what haters do.

Leftists are consistent only in their hate. They don't have principles. How can they when "there is no such thing as right and wrong"? All they have is postures, pretend-principles that can be changed as easily as one changes one's shirt

A Leftist assumption: Making money doesn't entitle you to it, but wanting money does.

"Politicians never accuse you of 'greed' for wanting other people's money -- only for wanting to keep your own money." --columnist Joe Sobran (1946-2010)

I often wonder why Leftists refer to conservatives as "wingnuts". A wingnut is a very useful device that adds versatility wherever it is used. Clearly, Leftists are not even good at abuse. Once they have accused their opponents of racism and Nazism, their cupboard is bare. Similarly, Leftists seem to think it is a devastating critique to refer to "Worldnet Daily" as "Worldnut Daily". The poverty of their argumentation is truly pitiful

The Leftist assertion that there is no such thing as right and wrong has a distinguished history. It was Pontius Pilate who said "What is truth?" (John 18:38). From a Christian viewpoint, the assertion is undoubtedly the Devil's gospel

"If one rejects laissez faire on account of man's fallibility and moral weakness, one must for the same reason also reject every kind of government action." - Ludwig von Mises

Because of their need to be different from the mainstream, Leftists are very good at pretending that sow's ears are silk purses

Among people who should know better, Leftism is a character defect. Leftists HATE success in others -- which is why notably successful societies such as the USA and Israel are hated and failures such as the Palestinians can do no wrong.

A Leftist's beliefs are all designed to pander to his ego. So when you have an argument with a Leftist, you are not really discussing the facts. You are threatening his self esteem. Which is why the normal Leftist response to challenge is mere abuse.

Because of the fragility of a Leftist's ego, anything that threatens it is intolerable and provokes rage. So most Leftist blogs can be summarized in one sentence: "How DARE anybody question what I believe!". Rage and abuse substitute for an appeal to facts and reason.

Their threatened egos sometimes drive Leftists into quite desperate flights from reality. For instance, they often call Israel an "Apartheid state" -- when it is in fact the Arab states that practice Apartheid -- witness the severe restrictions on Christians in Saudi Arabia. There are no such restrictions in Israel.

Because their beliefs serve their ego rather than reality, Leftists just KNOW what is good for us. Conservatives need evidence.

“Absolute certainty is the privilege of uneducated men and fanatics.” -- C.J. Keyser

"Almost all professors of the arts and sciences are egregiously conceited, and derive their happiness from their conceit" -- Erasmus

THE FALSIFICATION OF HISTORY HAS DONE MORE TO IMPEDE HUMAN DEVELOPMENT THAN ANY ONE THING KNOWN TO MANKIND -- ROUSSEAU

"Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? there is more hope of a fool than of him" (Proverbs 26: 12). I think that sums up Leftists pretty well.

Eminent British astrophysicist Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington is often quoted as saying: "Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine." It was probably in fact said by his contemporary, J.B.S. Haldane. But regardless of authorship, it could well be a conservative credo not only about the cosmos but also about human beings and human society. Mankind is too complex to be summed up by simple rules and even complex rules are only approximations with many exceptions.

Politics is the only thing Leftists know about. They know nothing of economics, history or business. Their only expertise is in promoting feelings of grievance

Socialism makes the individual the slave of the state – capitalism frees them.

MESSAGE to Leftists: Even if you killed all conservatives tomorrow, you would just end up in another Soviet Union. Conservatives are all that stand between you and that dismal fate.

Many readers here will have noticed that what I say about Leftists sometimes sounds reminiscent of what Leftists say about conservatives. There is an excellent reason for that. Leftists are great "projectors" (people who see their own faults in others). So a good first step in finding out what is true of Leftists is to look at what they say about conservatives! They even accuse conservatives of projection (of course).

The research shows clearly that one's Left/Right stance is strongly genetically inherited but nobody knows just what specifically is inherited. What is inherited that makes people Leftist or Rightist? There is any amount of evidence that personality traits are strongly genetically inherited so my proposal is that hard-core Leftists are people who tend to let their emotions (including hatred and envy) run away with them and who are much more in need of seeing themselves as better than others -- two attributes that are probably related to one another. Such Leftists may be an evolutionary leftover from a more primitive past.

Leftists seem to believe that if someone like Al Gore says it, it must be right. They obviously have a strong need for an authority figure. The fact that the two most authoritarian regimes of the 20th century (Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia) were socialist is thus no surprise. Leftists often accuse conservatives of being "authoritarian" but that is just part of their usual "projective" strategy -- seeing in others what is really true of themselves.

Following the Sotomayor precedent, I would hope that a wise older white man such as myself with the richness of that experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than someone who hasn’t lived that life.

IQ and ideology: Most academics are Left-leaning. Why? Because very bright people who have balls go into business, while very bright people with no balls go into academe. I did both with considerable success, which makes me a considerable rarity. Although I am a born academic, I have always been good with money too. My share portfolio even survived the GFC in good shape. The academics hate it that bright people with balls make more money than them.

If I were not an atheist, I would believe that God had a sense of humour. He gave his chosen people (the Jews) enormous advantages -- high intelligence and high drive -- but to keep it fair he deprived them of something hugely important too: Political sense. So Jews to this day tend very strongly to be Leftist -- even though the chief source of antisemitism for roughly the last 200 years has been the political Left!

And the other side of the coin is that Jews tend to despise conservatives and Christians. Yet American fundamentalist Christians are the bedrock of the vital American support for Israel, the ultimate bolthole for all Jews. So Jewish political irrationality seems to be a rather good example of the saying that "The LORD giveth and the LORD taketh away". There are many other examples of such perversity (or "balance"). The sometimes severe side-effects of most pharmaceutical drugs is an obvious one but there is another ethnic example too, a rather amusing one. Chinese people are in general smart and patient people but their rate of traffic accidents in China is about 10 times higher than what prevails in Western societies. They are brilliant mathematicians and fearless business entrepreneurs but at the same time bad drivers!

The above is good testimony to the accuracy of the basic conservative insight that almost anything in human life is too complex to be reduced to any simple rule and too complex to be reduced to any rule at all without allowance for important exceptions to the rule concerned

"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here. For roughly two centuries now, antisemitism has, throughout the Western world, been principally associated with Leftism (including the socialist Hitler) -- as it is to this day. See here.

Leftists call their hatred of Israel "Anti-Zionism" but Zionists are only a small minority in Israel

Some of the Leftist hatred of Israel is motivated by old-fashioned antisemitism (beliefs in Jewish "control" etc.) but most of it is just the regular Leftist hatred of success in others. And because the societies they inhabit do not give them the vast amount of recognition that their large but weak egos need, some of the most virulent haters of Israel and America live in those countries. So the hatred is the product of pathologically high self-esteem.

Conservatives, on the other hand could be antisemitic on entirely rational grounds: Namely, the overwhelming Leftism of the Jewish population as a whole. Because they judge the individual, however, only a tiny minority of conservative-oriented people make such general judgments. The longer Jews continue on their "stiff-necked" course, however, the more that is in danger of changing. The children of Israel have been a stiff necked people since the days of Moses, however, so they will no doubt continue to vote with their emotions rather than their reason.

Who said this in 1968? "I am not, and never have been, a man of the right. My position was on the Left and is now in the centre of politics". It was Sir Oswald Mosley, founder and leader of the British Union of Fascists

The term "Fascism" is mostly used by the Left as a brainless term of abuse. But when they do make a serious attempt to define it, they produce very complex and elaborate definitions -- e.g. here and here. In fact, Fascism is simply extreme socialism plus nationalism. But great gyrations are needed to avoid mentioning the first part of that recipe, of course.

Politicians are in general only a little above average in intelligence so the idea that they can make better decisions for us that we can make ourselves is laughable

A quote from the late Dr. Adrian Rogers, 1931–2005: "You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it."

The Supreme Court of the United States is now and always has been a judicial abomination. Its guiding principles have always been political rather than judicial. It is not as political as Stalin's courts but its respect for the constitution is little better. Some recent abuses: The "equal treatment" provision of the 14th amendment was specifically written to outlaw racial discrimination yet the court has allowed various forms of "affirmative action" for decades -- when all such policies should have been completely stuck down immediately. The 2nd. amendment says that the right to bear arms shall not be infringed yet gun control laws infringe it in every State in the union. The 1st amendment provides that speech shall be freely exercised yet the court has upheld various restrictions on the financing and display of political advertising. The court has found a right to abortion in the constitution when the word abortion is not even mentioned there. The court invents rights that do not exist and denies rights that do.

The U.S. Constitution is neither "living" nor dead. It is fixed until it is amended. But amending it is the privilege of the people, not of politicians or judges

The book, The authoritarian personality, authored by T.W. Adorno et al. in 1950, has been massively popular among psychologists. It claims that a set of ideas that were popular in the "Progressive"-dominated America of the prewar era were "authoritarian". Leftist regimes always are authoritarian so that claim was not a big problem. What was quite amazing however is that Adorno et al. identified such ideas as "conservative". They were in fact simply popular ideas of the day but ones that had been most heavily promoted by the Left right up until the then-recent WWII. See here for details of prewar "Progressive" thinking.

The basic aim of all bureaucrats is to maximize their funding and minimize their workload

A lesson in Australian: When an Australian calls someone a "big-noter", he is saying that the person is a chronic and rather pathetic seeker of admiration -- as in someone who often pulls out "big notes" (e.g. $100.00 bills) to pay for things, thus endeavouring to create the impression that he is rich. The term describes the mentality rather than the actual behavior with money and it aptly describes many Leftists. When they purport to show "compassion" by advocating things that cost themselves nothing (e.g. advocating more taxes on "the rich" to help "the poor"), an Australian might say that the Leftist is "big-noting himself". There is an example of the usage here. The term conveys contempt. There is a wise description of Australians generally here

I imagine that most Americans might find this rather mad -- but I am an unabashed Monarchist. I believe that a constitutional Monarchy is the best form of government presently available. And since I live in a constitutional monarchy (Australia) I am very happily situated. Can a libertarian be a Monarchist? I think so -- and prominent British libertarian Sean Gabb seems to think so too! Long live the Queen! (And note that Australia ranks well above the USA on the Index of Economic freedom. Heh!)

Throughout Europe there is an association between monarchism and conservatism. It is a little sad that American conservatives do not have access to that satisfaction. So even though Australia is much more distant from Europe (geographically) than the USA is, Australia is in some ways more of an outpost of Europe than America is! Mind you: Australia is not very atypical of its region. Australia lies just South of Asia -- and both Japan and Thailand have greatly respected monarchies. And the demise of the Cambodian monarchy was disastrous for Cambodia

People who mention differences in black vs. white IQ are these days almost universally howled down and subjected to the most extreme abuse. I am a psychometrician, however, so I feel obliged to defend the scientific truth of the matter: The average African adult has about the same IQ as an average white 11-year-old and African Americans (who are partly white in ancestry) average out at a mental age of 14. The American Psychological Association is generally Left-leaning but it is the world's most prestigious body of academic psychologists. And even they have had to concede that sort of gap (one SD) in black vs. white average IQ. 11-year olds can do a lot of things but they also have their limits and there are times when such limits need to be allowed for.

Jesse Jackson: "There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery -- then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved." There ARE important racial differences.

Some Jimmy Carter wisdom: "I think it's inevitable that there will be a lower standard of living than what everybody had always anticipated," he told advisers in 1979. "there's going to be a downward turning."

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason

The "steamroller" above who got steamrollered by his own hubris. Spitzer is a warning of how self-destructive a vast ego can be -- and also of how destructive of others it can be.

Many people hunger and thirst after righteousness. Some find it in the hatreds of the Left. Others find it in the love of Christ. I don't hunger and thirst after righteousness at all. I hunger and thirst after truth. How old-fashioned can you get?

Heritage is what survives death: Very rare and hence very valuable

I completed the work for my Ph.D. at the end of 1970 but the degree was not awarded until 1974 -- due to some academic nastiness from Seymour Martin Lipset and Fred Emery. A conservative or libertarian who makes it through the academic maze has to be at least twice as good as the average conformist Leftist. Fortunately, I am a born academic.

As well as being an academic, I am an army man and I am pleased and proud to say that I have worn my country's uniform. Although my service in the Australian army was chiefly noted for its un-notability, I DID join voluntarily in the Vietnam era, I DID reach the rank of Sergeant, and I DID volunteer for a posting in Vietnam. So I think I may be forgiven for saying something that most army men think but which most don't say because they think it is too obvious: The profession of arms is the noblest profession of all because it is the only profession where you offer to lay down your life in performing your duties. Our men fought so that people could say and think what they like but I myself always treat military men with great respect -- respect which in my view is simply their due.

Two lines below of a famous hymn that would be incomprehensible to Leftists today ("honor"? "right"? "freedom?" Freedom to agree with them is the only freedom they believe in)

First to fight for right and freedom,
And to keep our honor clean

It is of course the hymn of the USMC -- still today the relentless warriors that they always were.

I imagine that few of my readers will understand it, but I am an unabashed monarchist. And, as someone who was born and bred in a monarchy and who still lives there (i.e. Australia), that gives me no conflicts at all. In theory, one's respect for the monarchy does not depend on who wears the crown but the impeccable behaviour of the present Queen does of course help perpetuate that respect. Aside from my huge respect for the Queen, however, my favourite member of the Royal family is the redheaded Prince Harry. The Royal family is of course a military family and Prince Harry is a great example of that. As one of the world's most privileged people, he could well be an idle layabout but instead he loves his life in the army. When his girlfriend Chelsy ditched him because he was so often away, Prince Harry said: "I love Chelsy but the army comes first". A perfect military man! I doubt that many women would understand or approve of his attitude but perhaps my own small army background powers my approval of that attitude.

The kneejerk response of the Green/Left to people who challenge them is to say that the challenger is in the pay of "Big Oil", "Big Business", "Big Pharma", "Exxon-Mobil", "The Pioneer Fund" or some other entity that they see, in their childish way, as a boogeyman. So I think it might be useful for me to point out that I have NEVER received one cent from anybody by way of support for what I write. As a retired person, I live entirely on my own investments. I do not work for anybody and I am not beholden to anybody. And I have NO investments in oil companies, mining companies or "Big Pharma"

UPDATE: Despite my (statistical) aversion to mining stocks, I have recently bought a few shares in BHP -- the world's biggest miner, I gather. I run the grave risk of becoming a speaker of famous last words for saying this but I suspect that BHP is now so big as to be largely immune from the risks that plague most mining companies. I also know of no issue affecting BHP where my writings would have any relevance. The Left seem to have a visceral hatred of miners. I have never quite figured out why.

Despite my great sympathy and respect for Christianity, I am the most complete atheist you could find. I don't even believe that the word "God" is meaningful. I am not at all original in that view, of course. Such views are particularly associated with the noted German philosopher Rudolf Carnap. Unlike Carnap, however, none of my wives have committed suicide

I have no hesitation in saying that the single book which has influenced me most is the New Testament. And my Scripture blog will show that I know whereof I speak. Some might conclude that I must therefore be a very confused sort of atheist but I can assure everyone that I do not feel the least bit confused. The New Testament is a lighthouse that has illumined the thinking of all sorts of men and women and I am deeply grateful that it has shone on me.

I am rather pleased to report that I am a lifelong conservative. Out of intellectual curiosity, I did in my youth join organizations from right across the political spectrum so I am certainly not closed-minded and am very familiar with the full spectrum of political thinking. Nonetheless, I did not have to undergo the lurch from Left to Right that so many people undergo. At age 13 I used my pocket-money to subscribe to the "Reader's Digest" -- the main conservative organ available in small town Australia of the 1950s. I have learnt much since but am pleased and amused to note that history has since confirmed most of what I thought at that early age. Conservatism is in touch with reality. Leftism is not.

I imagine that the RD are still sending mailouts to my 1950s address

Most teenagers have sporting and movie posters on their bedroom walls. At age 14 I had a map of Taiwan on my wall.

"Remind me never to get this guy mad at me" -- Instapundit

I have used many sites to post my writings over the years and many have gone bad on me for various reasons. So if you click on a link here to my other writings you may get a "page not found" response if the link was put up some time before the present. All is not lost, however. All my writings have been reposted elsewhere. If you do strike a failed link, just take the filename (the last part of the link) and add it to the address of any of my current home pages and -- Voila! -- you should find the article concerned.

It seems to be a common view that you cannot talk informatively about a country unless you have been there. I completely reject that view but it is nonetheless likely that some Leftist dimbulb will at some stage aver that any comments I make about politics and events in the USA should not be heeded because I am an Australian who has lived almost all his life in Australia. I am reluctant to pander to such ignorance in the era of the "global village" but for the sake of the argument I might mention that I have visited the USA 3 times -- spending enough time in Los Angeles and NYC to get to know a fair bit about those places at least. I did however get outside those places enough to realize that they are NOT America.

If any of the short observations above about Leftism seem wrong, note that they do not stand alone. The evidence for them is set out at great length in my MONOGRAPH on Leftism.

COMMENTS: I have gradually added comments facilities to all my blogs. The comments I get are interesting. They are mostly from Leftists and most consist either of abuse or mere assertions. Reasoned arguments backed up by references to supporting evidence are almost unheard of from Leftists. Needless to say, I just delete such useless comments.

My academic background

My full name is Dr. John Joseph RAY. I am a former university teacher aged 65 at the time of writing in 2009. I was born of Australian pioneer stock in 1943 at Innisfail in the State of Queensland in Australia. I trace my ancestry wholly to the British Isles. After an early education at Innisfail State Rural School and Cairns State High School, I taught myself for matriculation. I took my B.A. in Psychology from the University of Queensland in Brisbane. I then moved to Sydney (in New South Wales, Australia) and took my M.A. in psychology from the University of Sydney in 1969 and my Ph.D. from the School of Behavioural Sciences at Macquarie University in 1974. I first tutored in psychology at Macquarie University and then taught sociology at the University of NSW. My doctorate is in psychology but I taught mainly sociology in my 14 years as a university teacher. In High Schools I taught economics. I have taught in both traditional and "progressive" (low discipline) High Schools. Fuller biographical notes here

NOTE: The archives provided by blogspot below are rather inconvenient. They break each month up into small bits. If you want to scan whole months at a time, the backup archives will suit better. See here or here